From its nascent beginnings during huddled meetings around kitchen tables, and the opening of its first repurposed factory followed by the move to a purpose-built, state-of-the-art facility, Tiger Trailers has become one of the most widely recognised, marketed, and ground-breaking firms in the sector.
Today, it is one of the UK’s leading trailer builders, making about 2,000 vehicles each year, with a broad product line,comprising ambient and refrigerated trailers, box van trailers and rigid vehicles.
Tiger Trailers are happy to say that all trailers feature bespoke elements unique to the end user.
That attention to detail has resulted in the company enjoying sales in 2024 of more than £101million (~€116 million), with it seeing a large growth in refrigerated moving deck double deck trailers.
Tiger Trailers’ Sales Director, Darren Holland, proudly proclaims he was one of Tiger Trailers’ founding members eleven years ago following John and Steven Cartwright having a vision to create the most advanced trailer and bodywork manufacturing facility in the UK, swiftly joined by other key personnel who shared that goal.
Core values
“Our primary focusses as a company, from the board right down to each individual employee, are on high quality, innovation, employee development and engagement, and supporting our community – and I’m proud to be able to say that these areas have shaped up very strongly again in 2025, in which we have developed and launched our new apprenticeship scheme,” Holland said.
From the time when John and Steven Cartwright set up Tiger Trailers after spending over 30 years previously in their family business, the company has always maintained a strict adherence to what it does best – making trailers for the UK market.
As a result, Tiger Trailers is the only trailer company in the UK to offer a complete trailer service to its customers — consisting of new build manufacturing, bespoke product finance, trailer rental, maintenance, repairs and spare parts sales.
“This, coupled with having a product range spanning from 7.5 tonne rigid vehicles to longer semi-trailers, enables Tiger to meet the changing demands of its customer base,” said Holland.
“Tiger’s factory is unique, purpose built in 2019, delivering efficiencies that facilitates the efficient and effective line production of all products – offering customers faster turnaround of orders and improved product quality.
“Our ethos is to provide customers with innovative 3D engineering design solutions, outstanding build quality and a collaborative, personal service.”
Darren Holland added this goes hand-in-hand with its approach to work and corporate culture, both driven by Tiger’s five core values — Innovation in engineering and manufacturing techniques, which shape its trailer solutions; Excellence, where it aims for the highest standards possible; Courage, so as to confidently tackle challenges while learning on the journey; Accountability, so as to work efficiently and in a safe environment; and Integrity, being honest, ethical and respectful with all.
Trailer market
Despite Tiger Trailers seeing the economic climate as being challenging in the past 18 months for the UK trailer industry, hit with higher costs and less production, it is optimistic about its own future growth plans, due to the development of new products and the enhancement of its existing finance and rental offerings.
“Our broad product range and new product introductions has allowed for growth in sales of certain products,” said Darren Holland.
While it sees the UK as its main market Tiger Trailers welcomes opportunities to manufacture for European operators, mindful of the typical differences in product specifications, longevity and usage profiles.
It has partnered with Lecitrailer of Spain, one of Europe’s leading trailer manufacturers, to supply refrigerated vehicles and other specialist trailers in the UK.
Tiger itself makes limited sales directly to the European market but has in recent years supplied box vans to parcel carriers in France, Germany, and curtainsiders to Belgium. However, it does produce ‘UK’ specification trailers, utilised by Tiger’s customers in both the UK and their European operations.
Tiger has also in the last couple of years exported bespoke double deck curtainsiders to the US market, for the operations of a leading UK kitchen and bedroom retailer which has experienced substantial growth in North America.
The company names increasing pressure to reduce costs amidst a more challenging trading environment, greater focus on increasing the lifespan of trailers in fleets, typically about 10 years plus, as the challenges facing a competitive trailer market.
Innovation
As a leading trailer manufacturer, Tiger Trailer has always recognised that in order to stay relevant and up-to-date, it has to innovate.
Its 168,000 sq ft (15,608 square metres) base is home to a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, 3D engineering suite, specialist training centre, and product showroom.
From being the first UK manufacturer to design and offer a moving double deck trailer with a 52-pallet capacity, followed by continuous engineering achievements such as the development of its Lightweight Clearspan Curtainsider Trailer and Captive Rave load restraint system, innovation is a core characteristic of Tiger Trailers’ culture.
“While we continue to build a large number of curtainsided, box van and double deck semi-trailers, along with ambient rigid bodywork, 2025 has seen us pour ongoing R&D into enhancing our refrigerated offering, with dual-temperature iterations of our moving deck double deck fridge trailer now in operation by supermarkets and other major operators,” said Darren Holland.
These customers include major corporate players, such as Asda, Culina, DFDS, XPO and Moran, as well as fulfilling an order of 68 single-deck reefers to Greencore, and the manufacture of a large quantity of refrigerated rigid bodies to logistics operators.
Tiger’s refrigerated trailers are built in partnership with Lecitrailer in Spain and continue to be one of its core product focuses.
A collaborative Tiger innovation that has helped many operators to efficiently handle fragile dairy products is its specific milk-carrying fridge trailer.
Milk market reefers in general have traditionally suffered due to the movement of the cages that carry the product, resulting in side wall damage, and Tiger’s solution was designed to address this.
To understand what the market needs in terms of innovative products and services, Tiger Trailers ensures it visits all customers’ sites and works closely with them in a collaborative manner to deliver bespoke transport solutions.
“This ongoing collaboration has seen us, for example, develop and introduce the second generation of our ‘captive rave’ load securing system that uses bungees to maximise versatility and also operator safety,” said Holland.
“We’ve also manufactured a significant volume of specialist trailers and rigid bodies for gas cylinder transport, along with drawbar trailers.”
The array of innovations isn’t restricted to the trailer specifications. In the last 12-18 months, the company has invested in new industry-leading paint booths to reduce energy consumption, as 90 per cent of the fresh air is recirculated during the baking process, while its Fuel Save Mode mitigates ‘lost’ air.
Also, use of its Variable Speed Drive ensures fans run optimally, while the booths’ efficient LED lighting maximises safety and their air movement system speeds up panel heating, reducing paint cure times, and baking at lower temperatures. Additionally, the cardboard filters used reduce waste and are easier to change.
Tiger Trailers has also included the burgeoning field of trailer rentals in its repetoire of trailer products and services since 2014.
“The trailer rental part of the business began with a strict focus on double deck trailers,” Darren Holland explained.
“The business has grown over the past 11 years and is a key service offered to new build customers, allowing customers to try Tiger’s product prior to their own purchase, whilst also supporting short or medium term hire needs.”
Sustainability
The trailer builder views sustainability and ESG as vitally important for its daily operations, as well as its customers’ operations.
Holland said Tiger has invested significant funds to make its factory increasingly greener and sustainable.
“From a manufacturing perspective, Tiger has introduced cleaner and more efficient facilities such as our new paint booths which reduce energy consumption through 90 per cent of the fresh air being recirculated, lost air being captured, optimised fans, efficient lighting, and recyclable cardboard filters,” Holland said.
“Plus, our trio of new GA75LVSD+FF compressors provide a 17.1 per cent energy cost saving of £9,971 per year and, more importantly, reduce CO2 emissions by 11.5 tonnes.”
In addition, the company also maintains a large array of 460kW solar panels on its roof, with scope for further expansion, and a tree planting scheme for each unit made at the factory.
From a product specification and supply chain perspective, Tiger ensures compliance with sustainable sourcing practices of forest products and has utilised recyclable alternatives for trailer sidewalls.
It has also produced a significant number of lightweight trailers utilising extra high tensile steel.
“We have also massively increased our trailer parking area to the rear of the factory, making vehicle movements more efficient and greener,” he said.
Apprenticeship scheme
Since the year of its inception, apprenticeships have always been close to the heart of the company’s founders and senior management team, with the belief that training and inspiring the next generation helps to create strong communities as well as businesses.
Tiger’s latest apprentices have embarked on a three-year qualification to become ‘Maintenance and Operations Engineering Technicians’, which falls under the wider qualification of ‘Manufacturing in the Automotive Sector’.
“As a manufacturer we’re committed to investing in developing skills for the future of the business, the local community, and the transport sector as a whole,” said Darren Holland.
“Developing and launching apprenticeship schemes in this way also presents exciting opportunities to partner with educational organisations such as The Manchester College and Total People, who share Tiger’s passion for developing young people.”
Holland himself is a proud example of the benefit of apprenticeships, which, for him started in 1987.
“Apprenticeships for me are essential to allow people to grow their confidence and skill sets in a chosen career that sets a platform to allow them to expand from there,” he said.
As a result of the attention to its apprenticeship scheme, Tiger continues to invest with its people, customers, community, product range and facility in mind.
Community work
Tiger Trailers has always maintained a keen sense of helping others in its community.
The company’s road safety program, ‘STOP, LOOK, BE SEEN’ has been widely adopted by its customers over the years, as well as local businesses.
The company continues to support the Cheshire Community Foundation, The King’s Trust, Passion for Learning, Cheshire Buddies, and Veterans Into Logistics and promotes and hosts events for Women in Transport, of which it is a member.
“We also support young people through our local Chamber, and trees continue to be planted around the world and here in the UK for each product we sell,” said Holland.
Future goals
“We plan to continue investing significantly in our people, facilities, products and processes in order to offer our customers increasingly innovative trailer solutions in both the ambient and refrigerated markets, increasing our business growth in a structured and sustainable way,” said Darren Holland.
“We attribute our success to our loyal customers, suppliers and partners with whom we have excellent, productive relationships, but most of all to our extremely hard working and motivated employees who are making a difference every day.”
Tiger Innovations
Innovation has always been at the heart of Tiger’s product R&D, and over the past twelve months or so, it has collaboratively delivered solutions including the following:
- AO: The innovative design of Tiger’s LST moving double deck box van trailers for electrical retailer AO was optimised for transporting double-stacked appliances on both lower and upper decks, up to four products wide.
- BOC: A specialist solution to design and manufacture flatbed trailers and rigid bodywork for transporting gas cylinder pintle pallets, with bottles secured in rows along the length of the vehicles.
- SELCO: Goods in 800mm high stillages, and magnums and pallets up to 600kg each, needed to be transported by a fixed double deck trailer with an upper deck rating of 14,000kg. Tiger s fixed the deck at 2m, with two support pillars either side.
- ASDA George: Vehicles required for transporting large quantities of garments on rails. Tiger’s solution encompassed ‘high cube’ double deck box van trailers with an internal platform, allowing staff to manoeuvre along the length of the trailer and vertically, with 150 load-securing bars so suit along nine horizontal tracks.
Fast Facts
- April 2014: Tiger Trailers moves into its factory in Winsford, Cheshire.
- November 2016: Tiger releases the UK’s first 52-pallet capacity moving deck double deck trailer.
- January 2019: Tiger Trailers relocates to its new £22 million home
- August 2019: Tiger Finance launched to provide tailored financial solutions.
- April 2020: Siberian temperature-controlled range launched.
- November 2021: Tiger Safety Team launches, along with the firm’s expansive CSR activities and memberships.
- January 2022: Ed Booth appointed as Managing Director.
